“That’s Pan, he’s calling us to assemble. I was hoping to eat first. Mind seeing what’s in here with me?” Wendy nodded, her own stomach growling. They scampered into the Table, scooping up piles of nuts, cheese, and berries that lay scattered on the table. Oxley grabbed a half-eaten egg left on the round table and slid it down his throat. Then he handed one to Wendy. She had to swallow a gag first but then did the same. She was hungry.
“Ready?” he asked, wiping a smear of yolk off his face. She nodded. He grabbed her wrist, and then they were soaring up out of the Table, up into the great jade canopy of the tree, climbing up past her hut, soaring past Peter’s hut, up and up through a hole cut into the thick canopy at the tip of the tree. Wendy saw the branches around her thinning out, becoming short and brittle. The leaves of the tree gave way into small clumps of silverish gray berries that dotted the increasingly bare branches. Finally, Oxley pulled back, and they cleared a bramble of twigs, so thick that only the tiniest of creatures could slither inside. As they rounded the top of the bramble, easily ten feet high, Wendy gasped as a concave bowl as large as a building opened up underneath her feet, made entirely of intertwined fawn-colored branches. Dozens of Lost Boys were milling about underneath her, looking up as Oxley took her down to the base of the bowl, Peter’s yellow moon marking its center. Wendy worried briefly about her nightgown and the boys underneath them, but she was thankfully distracted by the whimsical beauty around her. She had increasingly less time for modesty in this magical place.
“Where are we?”
Oxley gave a joyful grin. “Right above Centermost.”
“Oh, oh!”
She had indeed seen this bowl before, but from below it only looked like an incredibly thick swatch of branched canopy. Oxley set her down gently on the branches.
“Welcome to the Nest!”
Wendy let out a girlish laugh, absolutely enchanted. It was indeed a nest, a giant bird’s nest, only just the right size for the Lost Boys. The Nest was woven with thousands of different types of branches: white crackled branches with fingerlike knuckles, thin dark brown spindly branches that curled into elegant whorls, red branches that were marked with black pocks, seemingly unbending, one thousand branches forming a perfect circle. Tucked into its openings were thousands and thousands of tiny scraps of paper and pale blue scraps of linen. Wendy walked over to the side of the Nest (its walls towered at least ten feet over her head) and picked out one of the scraps of paper. She carefully unfolded it. Scrawled in messy writing was a tiny wish: “I wich Peter to make me a swuft.” She smiled and put the note back, picking another right above it and unfolding it. “More meat at dinner & that Abbott would be nicer to me.” The next paper made the hairs on her arm stand on end. “I wish that I could remember who I was before.” She tucked it back, feeling guilty for reading the intimate wishes of the boys and alarmed by the uncomfortable feeling in the pit of her chest, which was threatening to take over her joy.
She followed the branched wall of notes until it stopped about halfway around the Nest, ending where the weapons began. Axes, bows, swords of every shape and color, wooden bats with jagged metal spikes, daggers, butter knives, and spears were stuck within the branchy tangle, jammed in between its crooked arms, the weapons looking so out of place in this natural wonder. A bounty of weapons, real weapons, Wendy noted with a shock. She reached out and touched a line of dried blood on the end of a sword, pulling back when crusted red dust came off on her finger. The quiet of the Nest was broken when the boys began cheering wildly.
Wendy’s head jerked up. Peter was landing in the middle of the Nest, his adoring boys all around him. His wild beauty took Wendy’s breath away, a violent tug on her heart. Gone were the forest-like clothes he had donned before; he was now wearing armor—if you could even call it that—over his white tunic, black pants, and short brown leather boots. The chest armor was made of tiny, glossy, mirror-like tiles that wrapped tightly to his muscular form, each meticulously sewed together so that the armor flowed with his movements. A black sash dashed across his shoulders and around his waist, holding his golden sword up against his hip. His red hair glittered with the same dust that had fallen around Wendy last night on the bridge. He had been with Tink. Flitting silver light darted in between his hair follicles and around his face, which was curved up in a naughty smile. As she gazed at him, he reminded Wendy of a fire on a cold winter evening—warm, radiant . . . and dangerous. A different sort of fire was burning its way through her chest as she looked at him, a desire to be close to his glistening skin, hoping that he would notice her. As she gazed upon Peter and he upon her, John entered the Nest through a small hidden ladder on the west side of the curved branches.
“John!” Wendy cried. He turned his head away from her and began talking to another Lost Boy who had picked up an axe.
“Don’t ignore me, John!” She grabbed his arm. “John! Please! I just need a minute.”
John rolled his eyes to the boy next to him and gave a snicker. “Women.”